Captain's Log: Day 27

May 9, 2016

We all woke up to Chris's alarm to make it to the post post office back in Tahachepi. We all immediately went back to sleep. Hunger finally triumphed over the comforts of mattresses, sheets, and AC and the five of us headed over to Denny's for breakfast. We racked up a pretty impressive calorie count in the hour we were there.

The next step was figuring out what each of us were doing. The original plan had been for Raptor to take another zero day and then meet back up with us but Eeyore was having some calf issues and Rickets some blister problems. It was decided that the three of them would take the day as a zero while Loopy, Chris, and I would do the 8 mile stretch to 58 where the others could then take a bus to meet us. That settled we moved across town to another cheaper motel.

The middle of the day consisted of resupply shopping, mailing gear home, munching, and watching TV. A bit after 2:00pm the three of us hiking headed back into town to try to get a ride back to the trail.

We were able to get a ride pretty quickly and were soon back among the windmills. The 8 mile stretch was a gently climb up through the wind farm ending with an impressive number of switchbacks down to a small road. We decided to camp on this side of the highway and wandered along the trail towards the highway looking for a spot.

We ended up in a dry creek bed between the highway and railroad tracks. Not ideal but it would do. A few trains went by and while they were loud it didn't seem like anything we wouldn't be able to sleep through.

After dinner Loopy got a text from Raptor saying that she had decided to call it and was getting off trail to really let her shin heal properly. This left us only one course of action: take the bus back into Mojave to celebrate our last night all together!

Unfortunately we had just barely missed the last bus back into town and we had to settle for goodbyes over video chat. Her plan was to stop by Kennedy Meadows when we were there so we would still have a chance to say goodbye in person. While we were all sad that she was leaving it was definitely the best choice.